Marissa Mayer, 37 was named President and CEO of Yahoo. Mayer becomes the fifth CEO of Yahoo. Mayer was Vice President of Location and Local Services at Google, also know as employee number 20.

Mayer graduated from Sanford with a B.S. with honors in Symbolic Systems and a M.S. in Computer Science. She became the first Woman Engineer at Yahoo.

In her 13 years at Google, Mayer was responsible for shaping Google’s search homepage, Google Images, Gmail, she also oversaw location and local services including Google Maps.

Mayer said, “I am honored and delighted to lead Yahoo!, one of the internet’s premier destinations for more than 700 million users. I look forward to working with the Company’s dedicated employees to bring innovative products, content, and personalized experiences to users and advertisers all around the world.”

As many of your have heard from the recent report from Bloomberg, that Amazon will be entering the smartphone arena. According the Bloomberg, they will be competing directly with Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android OS. Having read the article in great detail, it seems that Amazon has three options on how they will compete in this crowded arena.

The first option, is manufacturing a low cost, low end hardware smartphone device with a rich customized Android OS similar to what they did with the Kindle Fire.

The Second option, is jumping onboard on the new Windows 8 Phone OS that Microsoft will be releasing.

Note: The first two options will automatically make Amazon’s phone similar to any other phone in the market that uses Android & Windows Phone as their Operating System.

The third option, would be to create a strategic partnership or buy RIM to utilize their coveted and superior Operating System, QNX (Now called BlackBerry 10).

Let’s give a little background on QNX. QNX is a micro kernal operating system that is used in 80 to 90 percent of the cars on the road (For example, QNX Cloud Porsche Carrera Concept Car and The QNX Jeep Wrangler), it is used in Airplanes, it is used in high-speed rails, and is the foundation of Cisco’s IOS-XR and IOS Software Modularity. It is a very secure and stable operating system that can multi-task like no other. This is primarily the reason RIM purchased QNX on April 09, 2010. RIM will be launching BlackBerry 10 on its smartphone in the 1st quarter of 2013.

If Amazon wants to be a serious player in the smartphone arena, it needs to differentiate itself from the other players out there. Two ways to do this is to license BlackBerry 10 from RIM or purchase RIM.

If Amazon creates a strategic partnership that is beneficial to both parties it could be something very special. If Amazon, chooses this route they could target consumers looking for low-end cheap smartphone devices and of course their consumers looking for content they regularly purchase thru and/or from Amazon. To do this they would license BlackBerry 10 and make an investment in RIM to retain a exclusive licensee partnership with RIM. This would be great for both Amazon and RIM. Amazon would be assured that they have an Operating System that can compete and best Apple’s iOS, Google’s Android, & Windows Phone. For RIM, it will give shareholders confidence that RIM can expand their business more into software development reiterate that QNX was a great acquisition that increased their ROI.

If Amazon, purchased RIM they could potentially secure and expand two things: patents & enterprise clients. Everyone knows that you need a great patent portfolio if you are going to compete in the smartphone arena and RIM has tons of great patents. The other is enterprise. It’s no secret that Amazon is the leader in cloud computing and has numerous enterprise, business, & government agencies as clients. RIM is a significant enterprise and government player and has a loyal client base. Plus, they have BES and the new BlackBerry Mobile Fusion. Let me put it this way BES and BlackBerry Mobile Fusion + Amazon’s AWS (Cloud Computing) = Dominance!

Mr. Jeff Bezos, please BBM Mr. Thorsten Heinz and add a PING!, after you have sent him your BBM message.